


Vita Morgana

by BlauKapellmeister



Category: Arthurian Mythology & Adaptations - All Media Types
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-24
Updated: 2012-12-24
Packaged: 2017-11-22 05:46:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,224
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/606453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlauKapellmeister/pseuds/BlauKapellmeister
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A re-imagining of the Morgan le Fay of Arthurian legend. </p><p> “How all occasions do inform against me, and spur my dull revenge!” --Hamlet</p>
            </blockquote>





	Vita Morgana

**Author's Note:**

> AU in context of the BBC Merlin universe, although I enjoy the show greatly.

I. 

News of the King’s death blew in with the first breath of winter. The end of Britain’s tyrant deserved far greater fanfare. Instead it was heralded with a hacking cough. The messenger shuddered once and collapsed. Plague had taken Camelot.

The messenger was dead by morning. 

Morgana gazed out the window from far above, watching as servants collected brush and wood for the funeral pyre. It was a curious feeling, this emptiness. Flakes of snow gently blanketed the windowsill. She brushed away their moisture in an impatient gesture, numbing her fingers. 

“Morgana.” A knock came from the doorway as her nurse entered. She straightened silently, smoothing her skirt. Tiny crescent moons flared in her palms.

Unseen below, the nameless messenger was heaved upon the bundle of wood, awaiting conflagration. The branches groaned against his weight.  
Myrddin drew level with her young charge. The matron’s face crinkled with pity. At the sight of those eyes, bleared with kindness, Morgana felt something shift within her. Suddenly she was cocooned in Myrddin’s embrace, sobbing into fur-lined robes with the intensity of a young woman come to sorrow. 

“Oh, Morgana. My dear, Morgana,” Myrddin murmured, staring over Morgana’s delicate head.

Morgana shook with great wracking sobs.

“Myrddin, what is wrong with me?” 

The old nurse found she didn’t have an answer. Outside the torch was lowered to the pyre, a burnt offering to gods long dead. 

II. 

Night fell with breathtaking clarity.

Sometimes when she closed her eyes, she was there again. The wind bellowed across the coast, carving secret messages in sharp relief. Her mother was reflected in the mossy cliff side. She was by the sea, her home.

Sometimes when the evening star glimmered, she’d hold her father’s hand again. Her fingers were tiny, enveloped within his. She’d shriek with laughter as he spun her in the air. His coarse beard scratched as he kissed her snowy forehead.

Sometimes she heard the crash of the waves. Gulls screamed. Swords clashed, and her father fell. His blood seeped across the flagstones, warm and sticky. It congealed across each crevice. Morgana scrubbed it from her fingers, skin rubbed raw as her terror surged forth. The tyrant stepped over his body. He had more appealing prey in mind.

Morgana woke up. Her mother’s gentle sigh was nothing but a memory. 

III.  
Camelot shook off the stupor of disease, cleansed in the welcome April rain. Morgana’s half-brother was crowned king. By May he had summoned his sister to court.

Myrddin had given her a warm smile as Morgana discarded her unadorned muslins, replaced by rich velvets, a gift from the young king. The cloth was dyed a deep scarlet, embroidered heraldic dragons razing the hem. She traced the brocade, wondering when she had become yet another pawn in the House of Pendragon.

Now she rode through the lower city, absorbing the messy chaos of the masses. Merchants hawked their wares, haggling merrily with broad-shouldered farmers. A street magician conjured butterflies. They flitted to and fro, scattering into the crowd where they dissipated with the scent of sweet apple blossoms. A little girl giggled as one alighted upon her nose. Soldiers patrolled the market, swords bouncing placidly at their sides. The sun glinted off their chain mail; each link shone with the radiance of a thousand tiny mirrors. A hollow-faced dog begged for scraps, only to be kicked to the side with a whimper. Filthy urchins, as immaterial as spirits, palmed coins to buy their daily bread. Everywhere she was met with the whispers of the curious. 

“This way, milady.”

Her gelding plodded onward, leading to the royal stables. There she was whisked away, overwhelmed by faces and colors until she stood wide-eyed in the throne room. For the first time, she gazed upon her brother. He studied her like breeder appraising a horse. 

She searched his face, following the contours of his boyish jaw. Where were her mother’s gentle laugh lines, subtle furrows in the flesh where joy became manifest? Where were her grass-green eyes? They once danced with pleasure, picking smooth pebbles from the sea-grass for Morgana’s pockets.

Utterly absent. 

Arthur’s face bore no trace of their mother’s mirth and majesty. There was nothing but the tyrant. An arrogant brow crowned cool eyes. They were as sharp steel, cutting iron with an adamantine stare. Bile pooled in her throat.

“My sister, Morgana.”

She swept into a curtsey but did not once bow her head.

“Your majesty.” 

She could barely restrain the venom in those words. He flinched as though bitten. This time truly looking, he studied her once more. 

“My sister,” he repeated with a sigh. “I deeply regret the past transgressions of my father, but I hope that we can live as family. You are welcome in the court of Camelot.”

Morgana rose. Try as she might, the gracious smile stopped short of sincerity. 

“Then I am in your debt.”

Arthur glistened in his finery, as regal as the sun, vulnerable beneath forge-tempered metal.

Morgana, too, was encased in armor, but the battle waged within. 

IV.

“She looks like your mother.”

“That’s quite enough, Timias.”

Arthur’s hands trembled, wine sloshing out of his goblet. He took another hearty gulp before placing it on the table with a clunk. Rubbing his temple, he gestured towards his manservant. 

“Just…see that she’s comfortable here.”

“Yes, sire.”

Timias thought he might have heard Arthur’s soft voice as he left with the dishes. 

“I’m afraid my mother’s dead.”

V.

Morgana dreamt of the crone.

The hunch-backed woman was weaving, gnarled fingers manipulating the thread of the fates. A beautiful tapestry unfurled across her feet. Thread-born bards sang tales of love and valor, a romanticized history punctuated by gaunt skinned mothers, withered and wasted. The images rippled across the cloth, springing to life in a spectacle of color. 

“Remember, my daughter.”

The cloth shed its skin, an adder contemplating the attack. Hesitant, the serpent coiled onto itself, queenly and serene. Thin emerald eyes blinked and then closed. 

The crone contorted in upon herself, replaced by a doe-eyed huntress. Naked save for the buskins about each calf, moonlight seemed to emanate from within. Her chin was angled towards the stars. The glistening spheres shivered in and out of existence, impossible to read. 

A branch snapped.

The huntress ran, as fleet as the hind, branches catching auburn curls like laurels. Her nostrils flared with each desperate breath, the mist pluming her face like dragon smoke. Morgana ran with her. Exposed roots grabbed greedily at her feet. 

Baying to the forest, hounds drew ever nearer. A long-jowled bitch snapped at her heels. Run, my sisters, the prey is nigh! 

And the huntress was hunted. 

An arrow caught the huntress’s side, swollen belly heaving as she collapsed to the forest floor.

The howling ceased as the dogs devoured her. The huntress never saw the man who led the chase, even as blank eyes stared and crimson rivulets cleansed her ivory flesh. He caught Morgana’s wild-eyed gaze and held it. There was something of the sun in his brow. 

Morgana lurched awake, shivering and empowered. The beast within had burst, clawing its way to the surface. Power, great and terrible, coursed through each limb. It welled in her fingertips. 

This. _This._

She was alive.

VI.

Arthur was the king of Camelot, but Morgana would have her reign.


End file.
